RELOCATING; They Don't Make Passover Matzo Here in Jersey City Anymore

By JENNIFER V. HUGHES

Published: December 31, 2006

AFTER 74 years of matzo baking at the Manischewitz plant here, it was all coming to an end, and the house rabbi, Yaakov Horowitz, was philosophical.

''The Jewish experience is one of transition,'' he said as he prepared to supervise the last kosher-for-Passover run of the crackers before the operation moves to Newark in the spring. Earlier this year, the 100,000-square-foot property was bought by Toll Brothers for $34.6 million. The place where some 75 million sheets of matzo crackers have been baked each year is destined to become another condo development in the city's gentrifying warehouse district.

''There is a great amount of sadness that the facility so many people looked to for so many years will assume a more, shall we say, mundane character,'' said Rabbi Horowitz, as the run of Passover matzo began on Dec. 20. Still, Rabbi Horowitz saw the poignancy in having the final, one-day run take place during Hanukkah. ''Part of Hanukkah is about people connecting the old with the new,'' he said. ''We're thrilled to be entering a state-of-the-art facility.''

The Jersey City plant will continue making other products, which include regular matzo, matzo meal, noodles and jars of gefilte fish, until it closes. Manischewitz also licenses its name to another company for wines.

The new plant, on Avenue K in Newark, will be more efficient and twice the size of the Jersey City factory, Rabbi Horowitz said. Most of the 100 employees in Jersey City will make the move to Newark, company officials said.

Jersey City's warehouse district was once the heart of a thriving industrial center, filled with factories and rail lines. Its industrial base declined in the 1980s, and about 10 years ago artists began moving into the area, which was designated the Powerhouse Arts District by the city in 2004. That ordinance regulated aesthetic issues, provided for artists' living and working space and mandated affordable housing.

Now, condo and retail projects are completed, in the works or planned for at least six former warehouses. They will add more than 1,000 housing units and almost 800,000 square feet of retail space, said Bob Cotter, the city's planning director.

The fight over the most prominent artist's enclave, 111 First Street, which involved residents and preservationists as well as the developer, landed in court; a settlement last June allowed the developer to build 40 stories tall, instead of adhering to the original building's height. The old building has been demolished, and the design for the new building by Rem Koolhaas is scheduled for completion in mid-January.

Conceptual drawings for the six-story Manischewitz building are similar, calling for a high-rise tower similar in height to 111 First Street, about 400 housing units and 70,000 square feet of retail, said Bob Antonicello, executive director of the city's redevelopment agency.

That was what some preservationists feared after the 111 First Street settlement.

''If you want to have anything resembling a neighborhood, you can't have these warehouses packed next to skyscrapers,'' said Joshua Parkhurst, president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy.

A Toll Brothers spokeswoman declined to talk about plans for the site.

The neighborhood that city planners are hoping will become a new SoHo was not so trendy in the 1950s when Bob Starr began serving as the president of Manischewitz, a post he held for 41 years.

''It was horrible -- this neighborhood was one of the worst slums in the city,'' Mr. Starr, who was visiting the plant, said, over the roar of the mixing machines.

The matzo meal is mixed on the plant's sixth floor, then heads down a chute to the fifth, where it is rolled flat and moved by conveyer belt into a huge brick oven that dates to the building's erection in 1932.

Mr. Starr said the closing of the Jersey City plant was emotional, even though he has been retired since 1992. ''I spent most of my life right here,'' he said.

Photos: MOVING ON -- The Manischewitz plant in Jersey City is closing after 74 years and reopening in Newark in the spring. (Photographs by Richard Perry/The New York Times)